Monday, March 28, 2016

Squashed Plans

     The last time I wrote in this blog I told about how I planned to do a canoe race and to ride my bicycle across Texas.  Well, both plans are squashed. I figured out by the end of Feb that the canoe race was not going to fit into my schedule.  I wanted it, too.  For some reason my pickup truck quit running, so I worked on it a bit and couldn't get it figured out. With the truck not running, it's pretty hard to haul a dammed canoe around in my G37. 
      The canoe race was not a big loss.  If I wanted to spend the money, I could have got the truck going but decided that I would table the boat race idea. I had slowly started dumping money into the bike anyway and didn't want to be carrying around a ton of debt.  One of my side goals is to be completely out of debt by 41 including the house.  So, no big deal. 
      The bike ride training was going good all the month of February and things seemed to be on track.  I even rode 150 miles down to almost Port Aransas.  I needed to get new shoes because the shoes I had were too narrow and were making my feet go numb if I rode for more than a few hours. 
       After the new shoes and cleats came in, I figured I should go and get fitted, since I don't know shit about cycling shoes and cleats.  I did that, and right away in early March I developed an IT band issue in my left knee.  After about 200 miles, I went to a different place which does fittings on a computer with some software.  I feel better, but the IT band is still nagging me.
      Reluctantly, I've decided to reschedule my bike ride across Texas until late October or early November this year.  Luckily I was able to change my plane tickets and not take a hit on those.  My most import goal of the year is another attempt at Nolan's 14, so I will be focusing on hiking and running from now on out. 
      After about 30 days, I'm hoping that I can get back on the bike with no knee pain and can work that cross-training into my schedule.  Ultra-marathons and mountains are what I like the most, so I'm eager to get started on my incline treadmill hiking.  I even broke out the hypoxico machine and did 30 minutes on it today as well. My diet is slowly taking shape; I'm hoping to finally get down to a weight which is conducive to hiking up 14'ers. 
      It is not always the case that one lays out plans and those plans come together.  I thinks it's all for the best.  I hate cycling anyway.  If you think walking for 24 hours is boring, try riding in a canoe for 24 hour or more.